Murder on the Potomac Read Online Free

‘house’ would suffice.”
    “What would suffice,” said Fletcher, “is for this cast to say anything that even approximates Madelon’s script.”
    “Maybe we should take a break to calm down,” the assistant director suggested.
    “We already have,” Fletcher said disgustedly. He vaulted the stage and fled into the auditorium.
    Everyone scattered, leaving Monty Jamison with Suzanne Tierney, the actress playing the adulteress Teresa Sickles.
    “Much ado about nothing,” she said lightly.
    They were joined by Chip Tierney, Terri Pete, and Sun Ben Cheong. “Chip knows everybody’s lines,” Suzanne said. “He’s been here for every rehearsal.”
    Which was true. What Chip hadn’t told his sister was that their father asked him to be there. His eyes and ears on how things were progressing.
    “How can you put up with these prima donnas?” Chip asked Suzanne.
    “They’re not prima donnas,” Suzanne said. “They’re actors.”
    “And directors, I might say,” Jamison said. “Volatile chap, isn’t he?”
    “Insufferable is more like it,” Chip Tierney said. He turned to Sun Ben and said, “As opposed to inscrutable.”
    Cheong shook his head. “It’s good none of you handle large sums of money,” he said.
    “Why?” Suzanne asked.
    “Because money and emotions don’t mix.”
    Cheong had been brought to America through the efforts of the Chinese-American Connection, a nonprofit, altruistic group to which Wendell Tierney lent his name and money. Its predecessor had been the Chinese Educational Mission, an organization funded by an indemnity reluctantly paid by the Chinese government after the United States had helped quell the Boxer Rebellion.
    President Teddy Roosevelt decreed that the money be used to educate promising Chinese students, and the mission began bringing them to America. Although it ended in bloody scandal in the early 1920s, the Chinese-American Connection picked up on its spirit. Sun Ben Cheong was one of many recipients of its generosity.
    He’d been scheduled to return to China following his education in America. But after receiving a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard, Tierney placed him in a job with his close friend, investment banker Sam Tankloff. It took Cheong less than a year to establish himself as Tankloff’s financial wizard. “I don’t make a money move without him,” Tankloff often said. “He knows ways to make money that haven’t been invented yet.”
    Not only did Tierney arrange for Cheong to stay in America, he legally adopted him. Cheong had told his rich benefactor that he had little reason to return to China. His only living relative there, he claimed, was an older brother, John, whose business was precious gems. They hadn’t seen each other in years.
    Jamison observed the two brothers and their sister. Chip and Suzanne shared few features to visually link them to the same family. Chip had his father’s fine features, the aquiline nose, resolute mouth, and lean, supple six-foot body. Although Suzanne was tall, only a few inches shy of Chip’s height, her body was angular in a masculine sense. Her features tended to the coarse—mouth too small for her broad face, heavy, dark eyebrows, and large, watery green eyes. Not wholly unattractive, simply lacking the refinement of Tierney genes.
    Cheong, of course, had not been born to Wendell and Marilyn Tierney. But, Jamison decided, he looked more comfortable as a Tierney than did Suzanne. He was Chip’s height but more solidly built. He wore his clothing well; the deft hand of a Tierney tailor helped. His ebony hair was combed straight back on top and at the sides. Pitted remnants of teenage acne on his full cheeks were visible in the right light.
    As Jamison watched them, he wondered at the relationship between Sun Ben and Suzanne. They sometimes looked at each other in a way that led him to speculate whether there might be more between them than simply sister and adopted brother. Nothing tangible to fuel his